As a programmer I have always seen the cloud, and more accurately cloud deployment, as a friend. It's one way to get an app as a service into the user's hands. Just recently, however, I have had the tables reversed. With me as the user, I suddenly find a cloud delivered app not quite as attractive as I thought.

There has been a long tendency in the development of programming to try to turn it into something else - mathematics, logic, engineering - anything as long as we can get away from programming. Why, when what makes software different from all of the above is clearly its strength and not its weakness?

Languages are not islands that can be considered in isolation. They have to be part of a development environment and it is time that this was fully recognized. A language isn't just syntax and semantics. A language is syntax, semantics and an IDE.

There are very strong indications that Microsoft is planning to put the Start button back into Windows 8. Should we jump for joy? The answer is that it all depends on exactly what you mean by "Start" button.